Field of View, by Nancy Murphy

Christina's World, by Andrew Wyeth (USA) 1948

Field of View
  
I am a stretched canvas. My mother’s
yearning background color. Dress dusty
 
pink the color of my first ballet slippers,
hair putting up a fight. Thin black belt around
 
my nickel of a waist, it takes me years
to become a body. Walking even longer.
 
The field is everything to me. The way sunlight
wakes up the colours, the way the hint
 
of a road slices space into before
and after, the way home keeps moving
 
away. Collapsing onto the grass,
oblivious to how it can stain you,
 
mark you as a child. When do we start
seeing the world as wider than we can
 
hold? I paint myself away from the edges
of the picture, on another coast, different
 
weather. I paint the story of my mother
and what she wanted. I remember when
 
she gazed on me, and when she gazed not
on me. I carry hollowness into the rain.
 
Nancy Murphy
 
Nancy Murphy is a Los Angeles based writer and performer. Previous poetry publications include: Stoneboat Literary Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, glassworks, The Baltimore Review, Eclipse, The South Carolina Review, Altadena Poetry Anthology and others. She studied writing at UCLA Extension Writers Program and Beyond Baroque, and with various private teachers and workshops including the Napa Valley Writers Conference. Originally from the East Coast, Nancy has a B.A. in American Studies from Union College, Schenectady, NY. More at website www.nancymurphywriter.com